Echoes of Silence
by Willow-Bee the Cat
Summary: Hermione asks a question that has haunted her for as long as she could remember.


Disclaimer: I neither own nor make a profit from Harry Potter or Supernatural.

Rating: T

Spoilers: Spoilers for all seven books of the Harry Potter series, minus the epilogue of DH and though this takes place pre-series Supernatural, it has spoilers for all seasons-particularly those which mention Karen Singer.

Summary: Hermione asks a question that has haunted her for as long as she could remember.

* * *

Echoes of Silence

* * *

Hermione bit her lip unsurely as she examined the ground before her. She double-checked that her prairie skirt, tank top and cardigan lay correctly over her leggings and hidden weapons, including three knives and her wand. Her hair was in a loose, hip length French braid and her feet were clad in steel toed boots. It had, she supposed, been far too long since she'd last worn Muggle clothing.

Gathering her courage, Hermione confidently walked into the salvage yard. A rather large dog barked at her, but luckily he was tied up, so she had no problem getting to the front door of the house. It seemed that her arrival would not be a complete surprise. That was probably for the best.

She knocked on the door loudly. A minute or so later, a man who Hermione could only describe as the cliché redneck come to life opened the door. He had aged badly with that beer gut which hadn't been there the last time she'd seen him and prematurely graying salt and pepper hair, Hermione realized. He looked older than he had the last time she'd seen him.

"Are you Robert Singer?" she blurted out, before he could say anything.

"Who wants to know?" he demanded.

"I'm Hermione Granger-"

"Do you have any ID?" There was no physical reaction to the name. He was a better actor then she'd given him credit for.

"I've a passport," she said, not quite sure how to take this. Most Muggles were not so suspicious. Although she supposed it made a certain amount of sense. Unlike most Muggles, he had good reason to be. "Haven't gotten around to getting a driver's license yet."

He took the proffered passport and examined it for at least two minutes before handing it back to her. He opened the door wider in a silent invitation. "I'm Bobby Singer."

He led her through the house, Hermione noting the piles of books littering each room. This house was almost like another building entirely, although she could still see its once bright and cheerful remains in the knickknacks and wallpaper and curtains. They stopped in the kitchen, where Bobby offered her something to drink. Neither spoke until Bobby had taken a swig of his beer and she a sip of water.

"I'm assumin' there's a reason you're here," he said.

"I don't know if you know, but Mum and Dad died a couple years back," she said.

"The police looked for you." He gave her an assessing look. "You disappeared off the face of the earth 'till you showed up to claim their estate last summer."

"I felt no desire to deal with social workers or foster families, nor did I desire to be sent out of the country to live with family I didn't know. It was easier to lay low for a while." She could not help but try to defend her actions. Considering that she left out the war with Voldemort entirely, it wasn't the most effective of defenses.

"It seems the police didn't notice that you continued taking correspondence courses-save when you took the autumn and spring semesters off the year before last," he said in a carefully absent manner. "All of which have been paid for with cash since the death of your parents. Of course, it was impossible to track where you were based on the correspondence courses since a post office box neither you nor anybody else ever checked was used and you mailed all your class work from different towns and counties."

"I didn't think you'd have checked."

"Well, I did." He took another swig of his beer. "So, why are you here?"

She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and asked the question which had haunted her since she was a child. "I came to ask you; why?"

"I've got no idea what you're talking about."

She gave him a hard look. "We both know exactly what I'm talking about."

"I really don't know what you're talking about."

"Are you going to make me spell this out for you?" She let out a sigh. "If that's what you want. Why did you kill your wife?"

"When last I checked, she was still considered missing."

Hermione gave him a look which would have made most of the people she'd attended Hogwarts with consider writing their will. "I remember." A morbid sense of satisfaction filled Hermione as she saw him flinch. "I remember you stabbing her. I remember you burying her body in the backyard beneath the willow tree."

"You were two! You're imagining things."

"How could I forget?" To her dismay, she felt tears welling up in her eyes. "I remember you were yelling and her speaking so calmly. And then you were holding a knife and there was blood everywhere." She gave in and let out a broken sob. "You killed Mommy." She pulled out a handkerchief. "Why? Why did you kill her?"

"I'd hoped you'd forgotten that," he sighed. There was this regretful look upon his face. "You're mother, she was good person, you have to remember that. She loved you more than anything. She never would have done anything to hurt you."

"Just tell me." Hermione stared at him, her eyes meeting his. Realizing that he had no intention of talking, she silently cast the legilimency spell, sinking just deep enough to see a flash, an image, before letting the spell drop as horror overtook her. She wiped her eyes and said, "Black eyes." She'd hoped it a figment of her imagination until now. "In the end her eyes were black. When you stabbed her, Mommy had black eyes, and then some sort of black mist left her body."

For years, Hermione had tried to convince herself that she'd imagined seeing her father kill her mother. All she'd ever been able to convince herself of was that the black eyes, the mist were just creations of her subconscious. Creations of her nightmares. At least until she had started reading the books of the Black family library in search of information on Horcruxes. Before Bill and Fleur's wedding, she'd read a book on demons. The seven chapter section on demonic possession had been chilling.

"I didn't know what I know now," he said, as if that explained everything. There was something horribly broken in his voice, in the look on his face. "She was possessed by a demon."

"Because of me. Because of my powers," Hermione supplied softly. Among the Wizarding, there was quite a bit of documentation on demons attempting to use people with psychic or magical abilities for their own purpose. It was why most Wizarding families kept their children so much closer than Muggle families, even going so far as to home school them. Hogwarts' wards were specifically designed to keep demons and those under the influence of demons out. It was why the castle was described as so safe.

"All I knew was that there was something in my wife and that something was threatening my baby," he explained. "I didn't know that an exorcism could have saved her. God, I swear I didn't know."

"You couldn't have known," she said, trying to comfort the man.

"But I should have," said Bobby. And in that moment, Hermione realized this had tortured him for years. "Your great grandfather, my mother's father knew about the supernatural. Told me stories about it when I was a child. I didn't believe him. I thought they were just stories." He shook his head. "It wasn't until a month after your mother died that I learned my grandfather's parents had been like you."

* * *

Author's Note: Originally, I intended this to be the first chapter of a story. But then I thought it over and decided that it worked better as one-shot which may or may not be the beginning of a series. Anyway, I re-edited it and added a couple things and I think it works well.

Anyway, I put the Author's Note as the bottom this time because I didn't want to give anything away. When I sat down to write this story about a year and a half ago, I intended for Hermione to attempt to convince Bobby to take her on as an apprentice hunter of sorts. And then it morphed into this with that confrontational scene that absolutely had to be written. I decided that I would rework the story to fit better with the scene between Bobby and Hermione.

The confrontational scene was inspired by the thought that what if Hermione was related to a hunter… say Bobby Singer. With the knowledge of what happened to Karen Singer, Bobby's wife, and the question arose of what would have happened when Bobby in his ignorance killed Karen. Obviously, Bobby or one of his relatives thought it best to send Hermione to live with cousins rather than with himself. From there came the question of where Hermione got her magical powers and the question of why the demon possessed Karen Singer to begin with.


End file.
